


come back with your shield or on it

by bookofthenightsky



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ancient Egyptian Deities, Gen, Pre-Canon, Reincarnation, Variations on Ancient Egyptian Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-14 23:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20609468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookofthenightsky/pseuds/bookofthenightsky
Summary: “Your fate is entwined with that of the Millennium Items and your pharaoh,” Set proclaimed with the certainty of the divine. “The time is fast approaching when he will awaken again, and the events that were set into motion in the past will be continued in the present.”A shiver crawled up Seth’s spine. That he was dead made no difference to the dryness of his mouth as he asked, “And that is why you called me here?”





	come back with your shield or on it

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to take a stab at reconciling Egyptian mythology with Yugioh canon (disclaimer: I am not an expert, hopefully there's enough give in the myths that my liberties might be forgiven). This was what I came up with.

Seth opened his eyes to the thin gray light of pre-dawn, the taste of paradise lingering on his tongue, his lungs filling with air heavy with the familiar scent of the Nile. He stood in a forecourt far grander than any mortal’s construction, pale marble columns reaching up to support a ceiling that was also a sky flecked with late stars. It abutted with the great river, steps leading down to the rippling dark water and banks of reeds.

“There you are,” a man said behind him, voice desert-hot in the night’s chill. Seth clamped down on the urge to whirl, forcing himself to turn with unconcern. His patron god smiled at him thinly, clearly not fooled. Tipping his chin up, Seth met his electrum eyes squarely.

Set, god of strife, foreigners, and the desert, had taken the form he seemed to like most: a tall, lean man beautiful as an open flame. His hair fell down past his waist, unbound with the shine of newly minted copper. For all that his skin was gilded from the sun, it was the too-pale color of a northern barbarian’s, not the right shade. Rather than a diadem or any other proper headdress, he wore the high-pricked ears of a desert jackal adorned with golden cuffs. The rest of his jewelry had the simple lines of the desert’s scouring wind, the lapis and carnelian and gold all smoothed to a liquid sheen. The fine linen of his clothes was dyed a shocking black- from canine ears to bare feet he was a sidestep off from what anyone might call _appropriate_.

“Did you call me?” Seth asked carefully.

“Yes and no,” Set answered him, frustrating as ever. His expression must have conveyed the sentiment, as the divinity clarified, “I summoned you, yes. That’s my prerogative.” Not for the first time, Seth rued the naming that marked him as belonging to this most troublesome of gods, no matter how appropriate he had to concede it being. “The purpose behind it, however, is not mine.”

“Purpose?” Seth mouthed, unenlightened, before noticing his shadow, previously lost in the twilight, was lengthening. Daylight, true and pure and scouring, abruptly came into being. Seth closed his eyes against it reflexively, to no avail- it burned through him like his akh was the thinnest of linens, no protection at all.

He heard Set click his tongue in annoyance before a wash of desert night pushed back the advent of the sun. Seth risked slitting his eyes open. Set’s lips were thinned in displeasure, his fiery hair catching the light that he hadn’t pushed away and casting it back defiantly. Shaking his head- it was unpleasant to be reminded he had no physical self here, in the land of the dead- Seth cast an even more wary look over his shoulder.

Light, raw and glorious. The passage of the sun barge turned the river to a rope of polished silver and left painful spots on Seth’s vision when he looked at it directly. He tore his gaze away when his eyes started to prick with tears of strain.

“Satisfied?” Set asked, “Or are you going to blind yourself.”

Seth turned a glare on him through the mess of bruise-colored spots that had bloomed in his vision from even that short look. “Are you going to keep being mysterious and annoying?”

He caught the edge of one of Set’s knife-sharp smiles, which quickly vanished. “It has been determined,” and from his tone, Seth knew that his patron was not entirely in agreement with it, “that the time has come to resolve the matter of the Millennium Items and their violation of ma’at.”

The sound Seth made was not a gasp, no matter what anyone claimed. “You- you’re-“ he couldn’t think of what he wanted to say, but it was articulate and _sharp_, even to this divinity.

Before he could unknot his tongue, Set said, annoyed, “And I still maintain that I should have been given a free hand in the matter. We certainly wouldn’t still be dealing with this problem millennia later.”

The comment apparently hadn’t been addressed to him, as a woman sighed somewhere behind Set’s back. “As entertaining as you would have found turning the kingdom to sand-scoured wreckage as punishment, this was the course agreed upon.” She stepped up to Set’s shoulder, his counterpart in the same fine black linen, with a mantle of dark feathers barred in white linked to her wrists by bracelets and a golden diadem shaped with the head and shoulders of a vulture. Like her husband, she wore her hair loose, but the effect of the dark spill around her slender body was more like funeral wrappings than flame. Nephthys said, carnelian eyes reproving, “You’d best get on with it, or Ra will take you to task for shirking your duties.”

“I wouldn’t have done it to the _whole_ kingdom,” Set muttered, just this side of sulky.

He shook his head, bright hair flickering, then straightened, authority settling on his shoulders like a cloak. “Your fate is entwined with that of the Millennium Items and your pharaoh,” Set proclaimed with the certainty of the divine. “The time is fast approaching when he will awaken again, and the events that were set into motion in the past will be continued in the present.”

A shiver crawled up Seth’s spine. That he was dead made no difference to the dryness of his mouth as he asked, “And that is why you called me here?”

“Oh, yes,” Set said quietly, the low gust before a sandstorm. “We wish to send you forth, in service of your oaths. This time, we want the matter _settled_.”

“As a spirit?” Seth asked, because the other option would be…

“No,” Nephthys said from behind her husband, flicking her eyes in his direction as she slid a hand through the veils of her hair. “A rebirth. A new life, to make good the commitments of your last.”

His simultaneous reactions were an eager _yes_ and a sharp _no_. No, because he had already _lived_ his life: ruled in the honor of those who came before him and ceded his place when his time was done. If his life hadn’t been all that he wished it to be, few were. If he had regrets, he had unburdened himself of them when he went to face the weighing of his heart. He was at _peace_.

Yes, because…he _did_ regret. He had been young and a fool; full of overweening pride and the certainty that he could take on any challenge. Truly, they had _all_ been young, flush with their new offices and powers. And those who should have known better, steered them clear of danger…hadn’t. It had been something he had returned to time and again throughout his life, weaving and reweaving the strands of fate as if to rewrite what had already been written. Another chance, a divinely ordained chance…was not something to discard lightly.

“You don’t agree with this,” Seth stated to his patron, because Set had made no secret of it. He vaguely saw Nephthys’ amused expression.

“I do not.” Set crossed his arms across his chest, mouth twisted with annoyance and resignation.

“For what reason?”

Set looked at him from under dark-painted lashes. “You truly wish to know?”

That was an out. Seth ignored it. “I do.”

“Very well,” Set said. He leaned in and proclaimed, every word clear and damning, “You failed Me.”

Seth recoiled, but the divinity wasn’t finished. “You failed your ruler. You failed your office. You failed those you loved and those who loved you. Every duty, every test, in every way possible save the last, you failed. Because of your failure, people died that should have lived. Some of them died _for_ you. Did you think that because you survived, you did _better_? I say to you now: you did _not_. You were simply more fortunate than they were. By any fair standard, you should have died with your father and cousin.”

“I am _not_,” Seth said, reeling but unwilling to leave that last alone, “my father.” He closed his eyes, drew a breath, and said, deliberately, “I’m not my cousin, either. And if I failed, I was not alone in that failure. I lived my life to _make up_ for that failure.” Cold comforts, but true nonetheless. “It was a chance that others did not have, and I cannot change that. But You spoke for me in my judgment when You didn’t have to. Have _You_ changed _Your_ mind?”

“The desert may change the lay of its land, but it remains constant nonetheless. No.” Set shook his head. “But you were hard-pressed to make it past the weighing of your heart this time. There is no guarantee that you will succeed again. In fact, I believe this life might be harder. And the consequences if you break are as dire as they ever were- for you and for the world. It does not fill me with confidence.”

Seth breathed in. It was as true a litany on his failings as he’d ever listed himself. But the merciless words had settled him, stripped back the layers of his protective reluctance like scouring sand. “Nevertheless,” Seth said.

Set sighed. “No one listens to me,” he remarked to his lady, who had stopped pretending to be politely deaf.

“Poor thing,” Nephthys said unsympathetically. Though her words were addressed to her husband, her carmine eyes were focused on her sister Isis, far across the great star-ceilinged hall, who was speaking to a woman quite overshadowed by the goddess’ glory. “He won’t be the only one tried, you know.”

Set huffed. “And yet, not all will be. It _is_ an irritation to me that the magician escaped _his_ reckoning. I would have quite liked to hear Thoth dress him down as he deserved.”

Nephthys said indifferently, “Choices made in haste are often repented at leisure. Now he must watch, with no chance to intervene save the temporary life given to him by magic. Silent as an _ushtabi_, he is bound to his choice forevermore. I think it is quite its own brand of torment, my lord.” Seth winced at the description of Mahad’s fate, spoken in the goddess’ night-clear voice.

“Nevertheless,” Set repeated Seth’s earlier rejoinder, a point he wouldn’t concede on. His lady quirked her lips but made no reply.

“You are certain.” It was a statement, not a question. Pale gold eyes caught him, forestalling an easy answer. Seth swallowed, yanked his gaze away onto an equally dangerous pair of carmine eyes, then found the safer midpoint between them.

“I will not fail this time,” Seth said, to his god, to himself.

Set smiled, all sharp jackal teeth. “I certainly hope not. I expect better out of those who share my name.” He turned on a heel, said, “Come, then,” over his shoulder, and strode towards the Nile and the steps leading down to the water and the nearing boat. His lady took her position at his right shoulder and left Seth to follow.

He took his place several steps behind on Set’s left. Isis, shining in her gold serpent headdress and sunset colors, left her deliberations and glided over, light to her sister’s dark. Seth looked over her shoulder and met her familiar namesake’s gaze with something like surprise. Nephthys’ sister caught his startlement with her hawk-sharp eyes and smiled grimly herself before stepping forward to greet the sun barge and her beloved.

Nephthys had said that he would not be the only one tried. It looked like Priestess Isis would be expected to mend her mistakes as well. He nodded to her and she inclined her head in return- there really wasn’t anything further to say between them. They had lived to repent once, and now would do so again.

Horus spread his wings, the beginnings of dawn beginning to paint the sky above as father and son exchanged places in the light of the sun; Ra-Osiris becoming Ra-Horakhty. Isis and Nepthys extended their hands back towards Seth and the woman at his side in a gesture less invitation than a demand. No going back now.

Thoughts of Isis falling away in the wild glory of the goddess before him, Seth took Nephthys’ hand and felt a shock of some divine magic pass through his akh. Set, resting his hands on his wife’s shoulders, murmured, “Bear my name forth with pride once again, my favored child. I will expect you returned with a pride equal to this bestowing.”

“Father,” Seth said, bowing his head to hide a pricking of tears. After Set’s harsh words, he hadn’t expected such a gift.

“Grow proud and troublesome and unbending in the grace of my beloved’s name,” Nepthys said formally, though her carnelian eyes danced, “for the gifts of the desert are always yours. Now,” she drew him closer, past her, and set a steadying hand under his elbow as he gazed into the might of the sun as he prepared to go forth into the world, “rise!”

Seth stepped up into day, the goddess’ hands leaving him, and did not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> There is some debate as to which animal Set is identified with- the hieroglyph depicting it is called a sha. A jackal is one of the animals the hieroglyph might represent, though donkeys, giraffes, or wild dogs are also considered. The sha might also be an extinct animal or a purely mythological creature like the chimera. Here, Set is, like his son Anubis, a jackal.


End file.
